THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES THE BELOVED STRANGER BOOKS BY WITTER BYNNER A CANTICLE OF PAN GRENSTONE POEMS YOUNG HARVARD THE NEW WORLD A CANTICLE OF PRAISE THE JADE MOUNTAIN, A Chinm Aniholofy; with Dr. Kiang Kang-hu (In frcparatitn) A BOOK OF PLAYS (In fntaratim) To include Tigir, Thi Littlt Kint, and Ifhietnia in Tauris POEMS AS BY E MANUEL MORGAN PINS FOR WINGS SPECTRA [With Anne Knish (Arthur Daviim Fickt)'} THE BELOVED STRANGER Two Books of Song S? a Divertisement for the Unknown Lover By WITTER BTNNER With a Preface by William Marion Reedy New York ALFRED - A KNOPF 1922 COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. Published, June, 1919 Second Printing, March, 19tS MINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OT AMKBICA 811-6- INSCRIPTION TO ROSE O'NEILL HAVE YOU ASCENDED STAIRS NOT TOUCHING THEM, EASILY TURNING AND HOLDING OUT YOUR PROUD HAND TO BEAR WITNESS? WONDERING WHY YOU HAD NOT ALWAYS DONE THIS THING, SO SIMPLE AN ASCENT, FLOATING OVER PEOPLE, SMILING FOR THEM? AND HAVE YOU CEASED AND FLOWN NO LONGER, WAKED AGAIN, BOUND BY THE WOUND OF YOUR CHAIN? ASCEND WITH ME THEN, BE WITH ME IN THESE SONGS HOLD OUT YOUR PROUD HAND TO BEAR WITNESS. TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE by William Marion Reedy BOOK I INSCRIPTION "You come with the light . . .' VEILS 3 THE WAVE 4 THE VOICE 5 THE STRANGER 6 DREAM 7 ROOFS 8 WONDER 9 THE WALL 10 MAGIC ii LIGHTNING 12 WINGS 13 CHERRY-BLOSSOMS 14 HEMISPHERES 15 HORSES 1 6 THE WIND 17 THE BLUE-JAY 18 TREE-TOADS 19 THE VALLEY 20 NAKEDNESS 21 DARKNESS 22 FEAR 23 A SIGH 24 SINGING 25 SUMMONS 26 MIST 27 CLIMBING 28 CRYSTAL 29 DUSK 30 THE BOATMEN 31 THE CATARACT 32 AUTUMN 33 WEARINESS 34 THE HOUR 35 LAMENT 36 THE SKELETON 37 THE CROWN 38 THE MOON 39 AN END 40 DIVERTISEMENT 11 1 change my ceremony . . I CHANGE 43 I REMEMBER 44 I DRIFT 45 I GAMBLE 46 I LEER 47 I COMPUTE 48 I STAB 49 I LISTEN 50 I LEAP 51 I HOPE 52 I EVADE 53 I FIND 54 I. WONDER 55 I DRINK 56 I KILL 57 I ACCUSE 58 I URGE 59 I ANSWER 60 I LAUGH 61 I SIGH 62 I FORGET 63 I EXCLAIM 64 I LOOK 65 I ENTER 66 I SWIM 67 I LEAN 68 I VANISH 69 BOOK II " Like an arrow you come . . ." THE CANYON 73 THE DUST 77 CACTUS 78 A GHOST 79 TOUCH 80 No EASE 81 LAUREL 82 SNOWS 83 CERTAINTY 84 GATES 85 THE JEWEL 86 PAIN 88 OPIUM 89 THE FIRE-MOUNTAIN 90 FLAME 91 FIRE 92 THE DEAD 93 CANDLES 94 PEACE 96 THE BELL 97 THE CUP 98 THE GOD 99 PREFACE by WILLIAM MARION REEDY Preface Not in explanation of these " Songs to the Be loved Stranger " is this brief introduction written, for poetry that does not explain itself may be something else, but it is not poetry. If there be those who do not get from these lyrics something of the poet's heart and something of their own hearts and thoughts it is because those persons fail in the one thing which the reader of verse must bring to the reading in order to get any thing out of it imagination. For poetry is written to the poet that is in man, and to none other. I doubt though that these poems or this poem will fail of appeal to anyone compe tent to comprehend a presentation of beauty and of passion. These verses are not so much narrations of inci dents, descriptions of scenes, analyses of moods or emotions, as frames or forms to be clothed upon with the subjective evocations they strike from the reader. They may be said to be images or pictures, but those images or pictures are more than they obviously contain. There is that in xi them, by virtue of something like chemic action among the rhythms and phrases and words, which is in effect an aura of impressions hovering over them and taking form in subjective creations by the reader. The verses may be said, in literary phrase, to be symbols searching out and bringing to experience meanings the relations of which to the actual speech are no more explainable, though no whit less actual and real, than those experi ences, moods, fancies, adventures upon which our minds are set off by certain collocations of notes or tones in music. They carry an oversoul. I should say that the densest person imaginable reading this work would sense the fact that the singer is one who is translated out of space and time by the passionate experiences he undergoes and is as strange to himself as the unknown lover is to him in a world of he knows not how many more dimensions than here we know. There is an atmosphere here in which the realities are de- materialized, the persons disembodied. I think that this eerie impression is the better attained in hearing the poems well read than in reading them oneself. Here are colors, sounds, scents even, that seize upon you and waft you away to a re gion wherein those colors, sounds, scents, reveal their over-meaning. Where the poems are most sensuous in their quality they are so as if the pas sion somehow is decarnalized by its own intensity: it becomes an incandescent, varicolored wraith hovering over its expression in the mere words. So, when, in the course of the adventure here subtly and symbolically developed, there occur accesses of disgust over disillusion and deceit, the extravagances of simile and metaphor attain a gro- tesqueness that is shocking and mocking. These grotesques become so much in contrast, so much out of key that they are comic, and the comicality is the very essence of ironic bitterness. It is when one comes upon these things that one is made to realize by shock the completeness with which he has been transported out of himself into a realm of otherwhereness of which the here is but a faint prefiguration. These " Songs to the Beloved Stranger " are all magic. They say more than is in the mere words. They have the character istic of the hokku, the tanka, the ageku. The Chino-Japanese influence is impressed upon them even where it is not clearly visible and audible in the scenes and incidents. They are not imitations, however, but absorptions of the Eastern spirit, that spirit compelling the manner. They say more than is in the words. They present outlines of pictures which call up in the reader thoughts and feelings wherewith to fill in those outlines with the story. The mere language is not so much as are its subtle connotations with the limitless scope of fancy, suggested by its phrases, its music. It xiii is as if the poet sings something in part, then ceases before completing the theme, and the reader takes the key and finishes the aposeiopesis. He does this not only in particulars but in generalities. The poet, as it were, states some fact or facts, however material or spiritual, and does it in such fashion that it moves the reader intellectually or emotionally the latter possibly more than the former to universalize it. The method is by intensification. There is an ascetic spareness of words. Little is directly told, but in a way to make the reader see, hear, feel, know much. The simplicity brings out spontaneous collaborative re sponse in the reader that reader in whom there is always a poet, else there would be no writers of poetry at all. These " Songs to the Beloved Stranger " tell a story of love, disappointment, disgust, loss, recovery of self and of the ideal that seemed to vanish, moving finally to an end in para- disal calm. The poet's experiences displayed and developed in the moods growing out of them, un fold with clearness as the rapport of the reader is perfected by the hypnotic spell of tone and color. Their objectiveness becomes subjective in the reader, who then recreates the subjective to a new objectivity. It is in this that these poems most resemble music. This book of verse is not a tour de force, even though it be so different from those other works xiv upon which rests Mr. Witter Bynner's already dis tinguished reputation. Those who appreciated "An Ode to Harvard," "The New World," " Grenstone Poems," or his plays, " Tiger," " The Little King," " Iphigenia in 'Tauris " works of a wide range in subject and manner will find here not much of the Bynner they know. In those works he is the poet, but not as now. He was more factual. In his lyrics he was a bit Browning- gerque. Somewhat didactic he was, too, and fas tidious in his intellectuality. In his plays he was swift and sure, and his " Iphigenia in Tauris " pleased me, at least, for its easy, off-hand, unla bored simulation of a Greek he made no preten sion of translating. All through his poems Mr. Bynner has faint traces of that which we find in this book, but they are discoverable only in the backward glance, from the coign of present knowl edge. No one thought of Witter Bynner when " Spectra " was published in 1916 or when more " spectric " poems were published later. " Spec tra " was put forth as the work of Emanuel Morgan and Anne Knish; the later volume owned a third collaborator. These " spectrics " were received with a loud guffaw, as, chiefly, they deserved. Clearly they were parodies, burlesques upon the works of the imagists, H. D., Richard Aldington, John Gould Fletcher and others. But they were something more, as I said at the time in a review of them, and as I maintained one day at luncheon at Mrs. Corinne Roosevelt Robinson's, when selections were read by no less a person than Mr. Witter Bynner him self. I held, if I remember, that they were in many respects better imagism than that they made fun of, mauger Mr. Bynner's derision of me. These burlesquers, I contended, " builded better than they knew." Two years later the secret of "Spectra" was out Emanuel Morgan was Mr. Bynner, Anne Knish was Arthur Davison Ficke, and the third conspirator, Elijah Hay, was Marjorie Allen Seiffert. "A hoax!" shouted the critics. It was a hoax, but upon the scorners as well as the few who had found authentic poetry in the hoaxings. The hoaxers themselves were hoaxed, for some of their pseudonymous perform ances were better stuff than they had ever done un der or over their own names. Of the trio, at least one was thoroughly subdued to that he worked in " spectrically " Mr. Bynner has never been able to lose Emanuel Morgan. Not though he deny him, as in this verse which was omitted from the serial publication of " Songs of the Beloved Stranger " in Reedy's Mirror, in 1918: xvt- Self-Portrait I saw myself sitting at the next table, But only in profile; The mettle of color was there On the cheek-bone, And the little crape mustache, Though not black enough, And the lower lip Drooping like a rope in water, And the nose curving to ruin like the Chinese wall With its little dark gates of old life . . . But when the full face turned, I knew again That there was no such person. That this is a picture of Witter Bynner those who know him in the flesh will not maintain, but it is a picture of some doppleganger; there is some such person, there on the page, whom Mr. Bynner cannot dislimn. As these poems appeared in The Mirror they bore the title of " Songs to the Un known Lover." The title is now changed to " Songs of the Beloved Stranger." Is Mr. Byn ner the Beloved Stranger or the Unknown Lover? He may well be both; surely, as the songs reveal, he has part in both, and both are " spectric," both speak with the voice of Emanuel Morgan and it is the voice of an authentic poet with a richer, xvii rarer, finer, more ethereal tone than anything we find in the earlier work of Witter Bynner. Here is something more than a pose. It is the voice of a singer with a clearer vision and a more moving rhythm than anything in Bynner before. Here the poet is more the master of the mystery of sound in the intensification or the subtler shading of sense. He is a better colorist too, and with a cleaner etching line, and with more delicate ar rangement in values. Mr. Bynner wrote these poems as Emanuel Morgan, and would have published them under that name but for editorial purposes of mystification. They are more Mor gan than Bynner. They are the songs of one who says " there was no such person " as himself, but the reader of them will know that the beautiful Chinese pictures here shown are not the offgivings of a non-existent intelligence. Mr. Bynner would seem to be possessed by a personality he conjured from his subliminal self it is as if a medium were lost in his or her mys terious " control." His case is strikingly similar to that of William Sharp who invented or dis covered within himself that Fiona McLeod, whose forthpourings so inestimably surpassed in beauty and in emotional content anything that Sharp ever did as himself. Bynner is not so irretrievably swamped as a poet by Emanuel Morgan, as was Sharp by Fiona McLeod. There remains some xviii Bynner a good deal in fact, unless it be that there always was much Emanuel Morgan in the earlier work of Bynner. We shall have to leave all this to the psychiatrists, but not, I hope, to the psychoanalysts, one of whom has discovered the " incest motive " in " Hiawatha! " Mr. Bynner went to the Orient with Mr. Ficke in 1916. In this book we have the singing evi dence of what Emanuel Morgan saw there evi dence in color, in sound, in scent the wind blown bells on temples, odors of wistaria, the statues of jade. The poet " holds the gorgeous East in fee " but passes it on to us in miniatures, or in little carvings of exquisite delicacy. By in numerable touches of artistry, seldom in broad strokes or splashes, the poet builds up his scene and elicits from it an emanation or glamour which is exactly the atmosphere in which a Beloved Stranger and an Unknown Lover both, as I take it, denied by their summoner may have their being. It is being of a kind, though warmer and more vivid, with that of those persons, like figures half awakened into life from dim tapes tries erstwhile seen in since violated Belgium, who play their parts in the opalescent smoky dream dramas of Maeterlinck. Here, then, is a mystery of poetry not only but of personality, whether they are songs of or to a Beloved Stranger or an Unknown Lover. It xix is a work, perhaps esoteric, certainly exotic. But however you may explain it, it is a work which makes the reader sound curious deeps of his un suspected self in response to the play upon him of the poet's curiously evocative art. WILLIAM MARION REEDY. -xx THE BELOVED STRANGER Book 1 " You come with the light . . ." Veils This veil Of lavender and dawn Floats off Invisible, And this of purple noon Unwinds in wisdom, And this of evening Twitters, undulates, Dips, darts, And this of night Circles around me singing To the very edge and presence of the young moon And it brushes the tip Like lips Three times. The Wave You come with the light on your face Of the turn of a river from trees to the open sun, You are the wandering spirit of the most be loved place And yet you are a joy not there begun Nor anywhere, but always about to be, The invisible succeeding crest That follows from the open sea And shall be loveliest. I have no language, hardly any word To name you with, I have no flight of hands To swim your surface closer than a bird: For endless changing countermands Your face and blinds me blacker than a crest of sun, O joy not yet begun But only about to be, O sweet invisible unceasing wave Following me, following me Through the sea-like grave ! The Voice When the dream of your voice draws near, my stranger, 1 am birds, you the wind, I clouds, you the sun, I the bell, you the tongue. At the sound of your voice There is neither dawn nor night, Weeping nor the peace of death, But only your voice And I replying And you not answering, A part of my soul passing and I not finding it Though I open the door and stare out When the dream of your voice draws near, O my stranger ! The Stranger Approaching ever on a winged horse Like yours And bringing me a living star, Like this they have all come to me And have all left me, All but the beloved stranger. And it is you this time Who are the beloved stranger, And I would have you lean near to me, Before you leave me, As the others have all left me, All but the beloved stranger Who will never leave me, Approaching ever On a winged horse, Like yours, Bringing me a living star Like this. Dream I had returned from dreaming When there came the look of you And I could not tell after that, And the sound of you And I could not tell, And at last the touch of you And I could tell then less than ever, Though I silvered and fell As at the very mountain-brim Of dream. For how could the motion of a shadow in a field Be a person? Or the flash of an oriole-wing Be a smile? Or the turn of a leaf on a stream Be a hand? Or a bright breath of sun Be lips? I can reach out and out and nothing will be there . . . None of these things are true. All of them are dreams, There are neither streams Nor leaves nor orioles nor you. Roofs I don't know what it is That sets me flying Over the roofs this morning Swift on tiptoe, Touching the chimneys and railings. Not even the middle of roofs, Only the edges. I don't know why it is So many dancers Dance in my dawn, Hailing this hard city, For most of the dancers that lead me Point in directions daily Of mountain and of sea, Toward little villages And houses nestling, Rivers, Hills. I don't know what it is That sets me flying Over the roofs this early morning Swift on tiptoe . . . You! Wonder Is it body? Is it spirit? Is it I? Is it you? Is it the beloved strangeness Of a god? The Wall How is it, That you, whom I can never know, My beloved, Are a wall between me and those I have known well So that my familiars vanish Farther than the blue roofs of Nankow And are lost among the desert hills? Magic And when I speak to you of common things You receive them for a moment With candor and with level eyes, Acknowledging their right to be. ... And then always you dismiss them, Replacing them with the long, true splendors Of a steely fish cutting through rings of steel, And you run your fingers across a mountain-side Strung like a lyre with thin waters, And you sheath the blade of your body In a scabbard of sea. And the rock, On which my hand is, Becomes a firmament And my head the moon And my feet The people of the earth Who speak to us of common things. II- Lightning There is a solitude in seeing you, Followed by your company when you are gone. You are like heaven's veins of lightning. I cannot see till afterward How beautiful you are. There is a blindness in seeing you, Followed by the sight of you when you are gone. 12 Wings At the first footfall of an uncouth season You migrate with a sudden wing-sweep To beauty. With you there is no meantime, You are now, You are the island Where cherries always blossom, The nightingale's Twenty-four hours of song, You are the unbroken column by the sea. Cherry-blossoms A child, Looking at you, a cherry-bough, And at me, a river, Saw you and you, two cherry-boughs, And laughed. . . . For run as fast as ever I may, My heart Moves only with you, Only with your blossoms, Remembering them Or awaiting them, Moving when you move in the wind And still when you are still. Hemispheres Only by remembering you, O east of my west, Can I make my lovers real to me, And only by forgetting you Can I find my truest solitude Strange and unknown to me. Horses Words are hoops Through which to leap upon meanings, Which are horses' backs, Bare, moving. 16 The Wind How long must the wind go round in a mill And the meaning be drawn? How long before it shall climb a tree again And shake down shivering silver? The Blue-jay I who look up at you Am a blue-jay Crested, And my only way Of saying to you, My sky, That I have wings of your color Is Clang! Tree-toads I went as far from myself as ever I could, To think of you. . . . I listened in the night To the little fluting toads Safe from their own images, And I heard them sighing With a silver sigh For beauty. /p The Valley Only I and the sunset In the snow-valley of your breast And the slow shadows of the motion of breath, Only I and moonrise in the valley of your breast And the dark of sleep . . . Until lilies in the valley have opened, And I am awake with petals And with the birds of your voice. 2O Nakedness Brightness of earth for the hollow of your throat They brought to you, And blossoms of death for you to throw away And many things like links of chains, To you whose wings are nakedness. But I have given your nakedness the gift of mine, And whosoever brings, from this day forth, Obeisances To the hollow of your bosom, Shall find between those hills of sun, Beloved, My shadow. . . . 21 Darkness Leaping from that other darkness Come two circles of flame When the pressure of your lips Made of my eyes Two suns Embracing the world with light . . It was a darkness As rich with strong wonder As the depths of the sea, And you were upon me Like great sea-gardens And great waves . . . What shall I care, not seeing you now in the dark? For you have fulfilled all darkness With light, To which I need not even open my eyes. -22 Fear This day has come, Like an idiot, blank and dumb, Over a lonely road Under lonely skies. And though at first I whistled and strode Like a strong man showing no fear, Yet I am afraid, afraid of this day, You not being here, And I look back and back at this uncouth day, You not being here, And my heart is in my mouth because of its eyes, In which nothing is clear. 23 A Sigh Still must I tamely Talk sense with these others? How long Before I shall be with you again, Magnificently saying nothing! 24 Singing What is this singing I hear Of the sun behind clouds? It is not long before you shall come to me, Beloved. And that is the singing I lean to hear In my side, Where your bird is. 25 Summons Sail into my sight, Till the sunlight gathers only upon you And the blues of the water Encircle you. Though you have sailed no farther from me Than a quiet bay Beyond a point of cedars, Yet you have been as far away As death. -26- Mist Between a high shadow of hay and of hills And the deep glen mothering the sound of its waters, I climb up into the dark Then slowly back again, Because it is so far to you. And I lean against the misty fence of the morn ing ... Till suddenly The mist goes smouldering down the world Before the stream Of dawn, Like mice Pefore wings. 27 Climbing The mist on the mountain is gone now. . . . I have climbed many roads to see the mountain. I have ventured many people to see you, Peak of golden sun, Beloved face. Crystal Between your laughter and mine * Lies the shadow of the sword of change. Yours is innocent. Mine knows You had sat abstracted By the touch of dreaming strings Of an old guitar When in the centre of the room A crystal dish cracked for no reason. Then you darted with joy to the fragments, Like a fish to a crumb, And held between your thumbs and your fingers Two pieces of laughter. 29 Dusk Dusk came over the hill to me, Holding- a red moon, And I danced with her, Feeling and following her starry steps, Till she turned and gave the moon To the swarthy night And slipped away without explaining. -30 The Boatmen A nearing benison of boatmen singing . . . Can they be bringing to me a new wonder? They are waiting in the night, as for a passen ger ... But who would embark now with no light at all? The dark is shaking like a tambourine . . . They are taking my old wonder. The Cataract Over the edge of the days My wonder has fallen To be scattered and lost away, Down from the temples of my love of you . . . From the temples of blue jade The downward flight of all the Chinese angels Diving together, With their white phoenixes attendant, Plumes, arms, voices intertwirling, All heaven falling, Green with the touch of earth Grievous with laughter, Embracing, thrown apart, And then, below, Inwound for the upward flight again, The crested flight, To the temples of white jade . . . To the changing temples of my love of you. 32 Autumn Last year, and other years, When autumn was a vision of old friendships, Of friends gone many ways, I stood alone upon a bank of coppered fern, I breathed my height of isolation, Encircled by a remembering countryside. I touched dead fingers in a larch . . . I sailed on long blue waves of land Flowing transfixed the whole horizon round . . . I wore the old imperial robes Of aster, sumac, golden-rod . . . I flaunted my banners of maple . . . And, when the sun went down, I lay full length Upon a scarlet death-bed. So kingly a thing was autumn, Other years. But here you stand beside me on this hill, And shake your head and smile your smile And twist these things lightly between your fingers As a pinch of dust And bare your throat And show me only spring, Spring, spring, Fluttering like your slender side, Cascading like your hair. 33 Weariness There is a dear weariness of love . . . Hand relaxed in hand, Shoulder at rest upon shoulder. And to me that pool of weariness is more won derful Than crater, cataract, Maelstrom, earthquake . . . For it is a double pool In which lie, silent, The golden fishes of sleep. 34 The Hour I was glad of the night that hid my face For your hand touching me Was the stroke of an hour In sickness, Was the fire of ice. 35 Lament There is a chill deeper than that of death, In the return of the beloved and not of love. And there is no warmth for it But the warmth of a world which needs more than the sun Or the warmth of lament for beauty, Which is graven on many stones. And yet I would be with you a little while, Dear ghost. I will endure even the marsh-mist on my throat And the fingers of the moon. -36- The Skeleton I keep my closet neat now, The skeleton well covered. But when you even walk by the locked door, The breezes of your look Stir what hangs inside And I wonder what you are hearing When those knee-bones knock together. -37 The Crown And it is you For whom the sun and all the stars Made but a starveling's crown, So azure was your presence And so beamed with light. You were the earth in which I would have laid me down, The sea in which I would have drowned. But the earth is dead now And the sea cold, And the sun and all the stars now Are changed Leaving your head dishonored and uncrowned . . . The sun is an ache on my own temples now And the moon an icy cap, my cap, The cap of a fool, And I shake the stars for bells. -38- The Moon Red leaped The moon, From behind the black hill of night . . And soon it was silver forever And there was no change . . . Until its time came . . . And its setting was as white as a corpse, Among the flowers of dawn. 39- An End As though it mattered, As though anything mattered Even laughter! For in the end there shall be no one to tell Whether it was laughter Or weeping. Divertisement I change my ceremony . . ' / Change I wonder how it happens I was made A foe of agate And a friend of jade, Yet have become, Unwisely I'm afraid, The friend of agate And the foe of jade So that I wish, by dying, To be made Careless of agate, Careless of jade. 43- / Remember There was an hour When we could love and laugh . . . And after that hour we went like revellers in madness And the touch of the pavement was a kiss And the street-corners were embraces, And the height of cities was our height over people And the height of stars our height over cities And the height of heaven our height over stars, And the height of God's throne would have been our height over heaven, But for our mirth, Which shook vertically through heaven And unashamed. 44 / Drift Shod in little winds, Or leaves, or snow, My feet shall drift across the moonlight How plumed they were with direction In those other days How winged with mirth! But now they shall drift And be still. 45 / Gamble I threw the dice with Death, I won. Again I won. Death only smiled . . . But so did the deep-bosomed toad, And the birch Winked its pencilled eyes. 1 Leer If I might be tall negroes in procession, Carrying each of them a rib of you, And a cannibal-king bearing your collar-bones. One in my right hand, one in my left, And touching my forehead with them at slow intervals, Might I not be too comforted To weep? If my love had only consumed you, Not left you unconsumed, Might not the moon have silvered me with content, Oiled me like the long edges of palms? 47 / Compute I am a miser of my memories of you And will not spend them. When they were anticipations I spent them And bought you with them, But now I have exchanged you for memories, And I will only pour them from one hand into the other And back again, Listening to their Clink, Till someone comes Worth using them To buy . . . Then I will change them again into anticipations. I Stab Love embalms the moments, Art stabs the years. Love is the careful undertaker. Art is the beloved assassin. . . Let me wear a black glove then With a knife in it! 49 / Listen I hear a robin chuckling / change my ceremony. From my hearse of winter, From my coffin of you, I start up and wave my hand. For who has returned, Curtseying in the shape of a tree. But spring! 50 I Leap I loved you And you are gone. And since there is so much landscape, Why then should I care, Having loved you, That you are gone? Shall I, Who have been like a mountain-top, Crawl prostrate to the sea? Or leap like a cliff? I Hope I must throw out my net for the silver sides Of fish like the brows of Chinese brides Or the round and red-eyed fish of woe Slipped from the waves of the after-glow Or for one small airy, watery flier With a fin of cloud and a wing of fire! I must throw out my net though I only bring in Weeds and a weazened terrapin . . . / Evade The look in your eyes Was as soft as the underside of soap in a soap-dish . . . And I left before you could love me. 53 / Find The darkness of your face, That darkness as of olive-trees, That darkness of warm earth, Once gave the whiteness of the Parthenon Its living beauty . . . Your face a wine-cup For the blood of grapes, Your smiles bright-weaving shadows of the vine, Make me a wreath of them, Give me a cup in the sunlight Of the blood of grapes! 54 / Wonder In my desert of familiars Time rocked like a camel under me, Ungainly, heaving minutes, Shaggy hours, Four feet gathering into a season, Trailing into years . . . O sullen-swaying ship, Is this difference the shadow of palm-trees f Or only the shifting of my familiars, The sands? -55 / Drink Wine is a worship . . . Blue peas Are set in rows In pods of lapis lazuli When gods eat, And though oysters Are white as dawn and singing From the sea The hearts of humming-birds Are black as a storm In summer. -56- I Kill I stood between you and the hills . . . Sorrowful hunter that I was, The wings of your mouth ceased flying Because I killed them with a kiss. And the rest of your wings flew away Into the sunset. 57 / Accuse You have words But nothing hangs on them. They gleam On the moulding of your mouth Like empty picture-hooks. Even when you say you love me, There's but a frame With neither me in it Nor yourself. - 5 8- / Urge Out of the woods you peer, And your eyes Are like the desolate moon Thawing. And there are leaves in your hand, Not withered. And there are words in your heart, Never used . . . Bring me your words, your leaves, your eyes, Beloved stranger, We have outlived the moon . . . 59 / Answer When you are asking, by these lips that touch, Whether death shall be nothing or be much, I am but answering your waves of hair, II Beloved, O beloved, who shall care! " 60 / Laugh Now when embers whisper And mice cry in the wall And a chair in the dark crosses its legs I am thinking of one Of whom I shall not be thinking some later night When embers exclaim And mice laugh in the wall And the chair in the dark uncrosses its legs. J Sigh You passed as quick and unknown As the shadow of wings On sun-closed lids By the sea. / Forget The manifold Red metal of your hair, vibrant like a bell, Made, when you moved, a delicate old din As of Spanish gold Brought shining with a deep-sea spell From where dead men have been, And to see one glint of the crystalline Blue magic of your eyes Was to be lighter than with the first Breath of bluebells after the worst Of winters was to lean Upon the skies. But when your spring shall have ending And your gold be done spending, The metal in the earth of you shall go its way And in some other heart than mine a bluebell sway. / Exclaim How can you like it, women! To be the solemn quips of bright despair, Angels in a graveyard, Monuments of mist on a grass-blade Tears of the laughing moment, Smiles of unsmiling time! I Look I have left you behind, You lovers talking poetry, You poets talking love, And as I look back at the yellow windows Of your dark little house, Smoke, going up from your chimney, Smiles into the night, Circles into a halo, Between the noise of two cats And the quiet of the north star. -6 5 - / Enter Into the night comes the blind man again, Seeing a god with his feet, And smiling with his cane At what we think we see. He climbs an infinite pagoda, Each hour a new roof Tinkling to his touch. He breathes incense, And a star is set in each palm And in his heart a vase For dew. 66 / Swim Beyond the fluctuating pulse of flesh, Its agile and interminable change, I am enamored of the rocks and sun, Their bodily firm warmth, their passionate calm . . . // woman I must have, give me the sea, Colder and stronger, closer, more suave Than women, her wave winding on my breast For the embrace, the shock, the ecstasy. Her white-veined arm of foam upraised in air To throw me back upon the beach of sleep. -6 7 - / Lean Close to the moving sands, I lean upon the desirable dead, Twining their fingers with mine, The dead Who are eased Of their love. But the waves come in Alive. 68 / Vanish Inrushing Life, Life, Life, Outrushing again, And all in touch Even this little moment Thrown bubbling, Iridescent, Gone. Book II " Like an arrow you come . . ." The Canyon It is the dead sex of the earth On which the sun still gazes. It is all the mountains of love, Into whose sarcophagus Peers The moon. 73- Birds I should not find the pain so hard to bear, Of lying bound upon the world, If only daily there were birds, like yours, Prome theus, To tear from me This unquenched heart. 74 Ruins O, to be back in heaven, Beyond hope, Beyond the mountain-circled and forgotten dead, Beyond the curling waves of buried stone ! Can I who have seen heaven decaying Become enzealed for the earth, Whose ruins cannot be So vast and beautiful As the ruins of heaven 1 75- The Arrow Now like an arrow you come, sped by an angel, Tipped with the spirit of wings and pointed with pain Only from heaven could fall the dart of your pres ence Blinding as the lightning, blown as summer rain. Herald of heaven you are and the dancing height jf wonder, Visible soul of singing, moving breath of breath . . . The dancers of the earth aspire to be winged al ways. But you are the dancer of heaven, yearning for death. How I ache to ease you, reaching with my fingers, Straining with my heart, through the empty air! I would take your beauty into my hands and break it And stand before you breathless and be the perfect slayer. Must you still in heaven dance with all the angels And weary of them, leave them and wander down the sky, Living, living, living, living, living, living, Yearning and dancing, and no way to die? 7 6- "The Dust Where you go I follow you, Rather I run before, And here I am when you return, Waiting by your door . . . I am the dust upon your face, The wind that worries you, I am your beggar and your hound, Your leaf of grass, your shoe. 77 Cactus They flush with their love and fill their breasts with it And say short words, not knowing what they say, Their meetings have contents and covers, Jewels and lids. . . . They can count their love. How different, O beloved stranger, Have our meetings been, When I may not say my love ! Meetings of mountain and desert, Open to the wind, With snow far-off, like a cry, And on edges of cactus Red drops Of the blood of silence. - 7 s- A Ghost You leaned against me, Humming a slow song Of purple shadows . . . Showers and javelins and shooting-stars Fell through me where you leaned . . . Whose ghost was I? 79 Touch Someone was there . . . I put out my hand in the dark And felt The long fingers Of the wind. -So No Ease I will not think of you too much, Lest I become as a king of olden hell, Surrounded by a ring of flame. And it is a trouble to you, And no ease to me. For if I thought of you too much, I should fall through space And there would be no world for me at all. And I can still go about the world As patient as a beggar with one arm, As valiant as a crab with one quick claw If I do not think of you too much. Laurel I will not call you beautiful again, Though my throat ache with the silence of refrain ing, And not a sigh will I explain, Though my hands fill with explaining . . . For you are as beautiful as a hill I know In spring, breathing with light But as soon as I told you, a chill like snow Covered and turned you white. I will hot call you beautiful again, Your labyrinthine loveliness I will not name. I will be silent as forgotten men Dead beyond blame. No matter how your airs of spring beguile, Be it my fortitude, my business, my endeavor, Not to acclaim the laurel of your smile Except to-day, to-morrow and forever! 82- Snows Which is it now, You who lived once by the chill height? Is this whiteness of yours Snow of the winter Hard-shining in the sun, Or snows returning two months after snow, Snows of narcissus, Drifting over you O coldest, sweetest body? -83- Certainty Does it mean nothing to you that I love you? . . . It would mean as little were I Michael Angelo. You would put out your dancing fingers, Those quick hands, And say, " No, do not love me." But that is what I love, Your certainty Of which on all the earth There is very little. -84 Gates I had answered them, " But I am left with no desire, For I have known a happiness Whose memory is all my need" The camel lounges through another gate. You answer now, " But I am left with no desire, For I have known a happiness Whose memory is all my need" -8 5 - The Jewel I have been in a far land And seen a lofty gate And a camel-train swtiy toward the sand With chrysoprase for freight And seen a lady with a ring That led me like an eye, And whichever way her hand would swing, That way swung I. 1 followed like a poppy-fool, Calling where she went, " O take my soul and make it cool, Unwind my cerement! " And still the coal-black jewel swung Before me, left and right, Like a chant the sea had sung On a windy night. Like dust behind her camel's hoof, I followed in the road To the golden-rippling roof Of her august abode. She turned to see whom her ring had led And turned away again Into a palace carven red With dead desires of men. 86 The passion in my feet was spent. I stood before a wall As wide as the firmament, As final and as tall. -87- Pain Yes, life has curious ways, and I to you Am little more than anyone might be. But I cannot lose you any more, my love. I cannot see you any more, my love, For if I do not see you I have eyes But if I see you I have none at all. I cannot love you any more, my love, For if I do not love you I have peace But if I love you I have none at all. It was a cruel thing when you were born, For I had always pain of missing you But finding you at last, that was the pain. 08 Opium Like an opium-lover, I banish you, All thought of you. But wherever I send you, Your two arms entwine me, Drawing me there with you Into exile. -89 The Fire-mountain Forget you ? Can that Hawaiian volcano Forget its quick fountains and cascades Of fire? go Flame Is it your fault That winds from heaven sweep through me and I call it you? Is it your fault That the chin and throat of you are the curve Of a mountain-brook where I would drink, That your whole body is a heap of stinging sweet ness from the pines, That when you sleep your silence is an arch of the moon, your motion thunder of the moon, And when you wake your eyes are the long path of ocean to a new burning, To a nest of phoenixes Whose golden wings Are tipped with flame? Is it your fault That phoenixes arise from fire And dragons? 07 Fire In the interval you answered me Like a fire : " But these hands " (They were stretched toward me) " Are for the hands of another, These tips " (They were curved and strange) " Are for the lips of another, And there is someone for whom these eyes Can gleam As they never can for you." So answering me, You let your bright thigh touch me And my throat rest across yours And your breast heave with mine, While your face crouched afar from me like an escaping slave And your hands fell fainting . . . And into me, even now as I hold you, Roll all the waste spaces of the world, Desert after desert. 92 The Dead Since you bequeath your living face And leave your throat for me to lean my eyes against, As though the one I loved the uttermost had died And willed me all her golden benefits, Am I not happy then? . . . O largesse of the dead! O vaulted throat ! 93 Candles Your eyes are not eyes They never laugh. Your arms and ankles laugh, Your lips twinkle incessantly, Your cheek is bland with mirth, Your winged ear flashes backward But your eyes never laugh. You do your best to arrange differently: You heap your eyes round with playthings, You tell them rippling ribaldries, You dress them harlequin and clown And send them skipping But they never laugh. Many people, impelled by the bright altar of your face, Come into the temple, Now knowing that they cannot see your eyes at all, Nor you theirs. And they worship familiarly; While I, looking close, am afraid, 94 For I see only a niche and candles: A circle of hard flames Around an unknown god. 95 Peace When I am crucified upon his brow, Will the strange god be at peace? The Bell Beloved stranger, You who were a god With a temple, Where are you now Among these dragon-tiles, Among these broken walls? Are you too become dust? Or do you hear the solitary bell Beside the single arch still standing Of the gateway which once led to you? Do you hear the wind Which moves me to these whispers, You who were a god? Do you hear the sand Drifting in your temple? Do you hear me, me, me The solitary bell Beside the single arch still standing Of the gateway which once led to you? 97- UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. JUL 2 I960 RC'8 LD-USL 1 1 1989 Form L9-25m-8,'46( 9852) 444 THE LIBRARY UNIVERV ' CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A A 000245430 4